Tag Archives: Sea Breeze

Hooray, I just finished the binding on my Sea Breeze and I even went out of my usual and used a lighter colour for the binding. I really like it.

You can see I went with my plan for the quilting. I like the effect, perhaps next time I would quilt the lines closer. This week I fitted this in between quilting for the upcoming Canberra Quilters Exhibition.

I decided to try to really fill the binding and so I trimmed the quilt larger than the edge of the quilt sandwich. Just a little bit.

The wadding and backing are cut larger than the quilt top.

The corner can be a little bulky so it can be trimmed on a 45′ cut to reduce the bulk. Sorry I haven’t shown that here, just snip off the corner.

Then when the binding is folded over there is some extra padding inside to give the binding some extra fullness. This is an area that judges will check in a quilt show. They will feel the binding to see if the quilt goes all the way to the edge.

And here is a close up of my mini. Thanks Angie for organizing this QAL. I have learned quite a bit and had a lot of fun.

A short while ago Angie from Gnomeangel asked for volunteers for blogging about a quilt a long (QAL) and I thought “Cool, easy project, not too big, would be great to do some sewing for myself…”

And I joined in.

I bought the pattern from Megan of Canoe Ridge Creations, downloaded the pattern and saved it. Always a good idea, do it straight away and save it to your computer. I have a special file for these sorts of projects. Do you have a system for your craft files?

After a brief panic about the dates and then realizing it was in July and not June, all was well and I decided on some fabric. I have recently bought some bolts of fabric and I wanted to use them rather than buying more. I have an idea in my head as to the finished look and I really hope they turn out the same (the quilt in my head and the real thing).

Knowing I would be on holidays before the QAL I thought it would be a great time to make up my quilt. So I gathered all the fabric and cut some strips ready to pack. Then whilst on our family holiday I discovered I had made a very basic mistake.

Always read the pattern fully!!

I merrily cut myself strips from each fabric. I did cut an extra strip of the background but still not enough to cut all the pieces. And now I have extra fabric cut ready for another project.

The rest of the fabric was cut out and ready to sew. The last block would need to wait until I got home. The blocks went together quite fast, helpful in that as a smaller project this is much more achievable. It took me only an evening to piece the HST and then the blocks. Sewing the blocks together was also really quick but I did pay attention to the direction I pressed my seams.

On my Sea breeze I pressed my seams to the side. So there are a couple of points where there is a bit of bulk but I have used a higher contrast fabric and I wanted to press to the darker colour.

So here is as far as I got on our holiday,

Well I actually got the rows together too, but no pic of that.

Once home I could cut the extra fabric and finish the last block and finish the top.I deliberated a lot in deciding how I wanted to quilt my Sea breeze. I wanted to have the colour deepening across the quilt. I think my colours could have been arranged differently to achieve this and I will try again another time.

To enhance the deepening effect I wanted I have drawn up my quilting idea. Expanding arcs, a bit like ripples on water. It will be interesting to see how it finishes up.

I am planning to bind this mini in the darkest green I’ve used. I often use a darker binding but it does really depend on the quilt.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing where I’m up to with my Sea Breeze. There have been some great versions to see and I look forward to seeing more as they are made.

Thanks Angie for the QAL, it’s been great to sew a project for me. Thanks Megan for a great pattern.